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User blog:DMSwordsmaster/Single-Player Custom Map Rambling
What, you thought this was going to be one of those stupid "lol im just trying to get the badge" kinds of blog posts which offer absolutely nothing of value to anything? No, it isn't. Get the fuck out. No, this isn't a guide to how to make maps in general. More like... A guide on what NOT to do in your single-player map. I've played a lot of single player custom maps. Some good, some shitty. And I've notice a lot of... "cliches", if that's the right word, of things I legitimately fucking hate in custom single player maps. I've seen the cliches in maps that range from newbie users who makes maps that are complete messes with enemies all armed with that godawful Heavy Railgun, to even veteran mapmakers. So here's a list on what NOT to do for your single-player map! If you do this, then you can expect your map to get a lot more flak. Maybe. I don't know. Nobody will read this anyways. Also, I may list "examples" of things having happened to me. I will not list the maps these events came from to protect the users who made them. Making a bad map is not a reason to hunt them down and harass them. ---- 1 - STOP SPAMMING THOSE FUCKING HEAVY RAILGUNS You know what my least favorite weapon to fight against in PB2 is? Is it the Ray Gun with its heavily damaging shotgun blast? No. Is it the CS-BNG, which basically fires a mini nuke at you? Nah. No, it's railguns. I really hate fighting against enemies with railguns. The lite railgun is annoying. But you know, I can live with enemies using the light railgun. No, my big piss boiler is this green fucking turd with its giant stupid blue light that instakills you if it so much as looks at you. If I had a fucking dollar for every time I went into a room in a map and immediately got killed by some random AI asshole with a fucking Heavy Railgun, I'd have enough to buy me a new console to play a different fucking game. Heavy Railguns, especially when upgraded, are very good at suddenly insta-killing you out of nowhere. Nothing is more infuriating than going through most of a level, dodging, fighting, and cutting your way through swaths of mooks, only to have a fucking asshole with this stupid overpowered weapon just end you out of fucking nowhere. If you're gonna use a heavy railgun, make it low leveled, and DON'T SPAM THE GODDAMN THING. IN SUMMATION - HEAVY RAILGUNS ARE NOT FUN TO FIGHT AGAINST. ESPECIALLY IF YOU YOURSELF CANNOT USE THEM. GIVING AN AI A WEAPON THAT CAN KILL YOU INSTANTLY IS NOT FAIR OR ENJOYABLE LEVEL DESIGN. ---- 2 - OH MY GOD WHY IS THIS MAP NOT ENDING OH LOOK I DIED NOW I HAVE TO RESTART FROM THE VERY BEGINNING You know an old saying? Quality over quantity? Yeah, fucking adhere to that. Yes, you can technically make a decently long map, longer than most single player maps from PB2's campaign. Does that mean you should? NO. So many maps fall in the trap of "Hey, if I add more to this map, that means there's more to do and it'll be more fun!". NO IT ISN'T. Overly long maps means more crap I have to play if I were to suddenly die! PB2 does not have checkpoint functionality! If it did, this problem wouldn't exist, but sadly, we don't live in that kind of world yet. So you have to balance your map accordingly! Overly long maps are not only draining to play through, but if you make a mistake and die, guess what? BACK TO THE START! This isn't bad in short maps. In longer maps, it can make me want to bite off my own fucking skin. For an example, there was this one map I played where I was only armed with a pistol with two NPC allies (Oh, I'll get to the NPC ally thing next...). I swear to fucking God, the level had about three dozen enemies, long scenes of dialogue without action, and two fucking boss fights until I finally reached the end! This isn't fun! This is too long!! If I died at any point, I WOULD HAVE TO SIT THROUGH ALL OF THAT AGAIN!! STOP DOING THIS!!! IN SUMMATION - KEEP YOUR MAPS SHORT AND CONCISE. LESS IS MORE. A BIGGER MAP DOES NOT MEAN A BETTER MAP. ---- 3 - OH MY GOD I HATE MY FUCKING NPC ALLIES BECAUSE I HAD TO RESTART THE LEVEL THREE TIMES IN A ROW THANKS TO THEM Hey, do you know how PB2 managed to avoid the bullshit of Noir Lime in the first game going out and getting himself erased by four angry Falkoks? THEY ADDED A FUCKING DEFIBRILATOR. But somehow, this amazing piece of equipment somehow eludes mapmakers, so you have maps where if you have a key NPC ally, things go from "swimming" to "drowning in liquid shit". I remember one goddamn map I played where the fucking map expected me to fight and kill a boss armed with an instant-kill heavy railgun, with an NPC ally. Yeah, needless to say, after the fourth or fifth time my useless ally got its fool ass killed, I fucking dropped that map and never picked it up. Why the hell do mapmakers think "constant escort missions is fun!"?? IT ISN'T. Failing because I made a mistake and got overwhelmed and killed? Totally fine. Failing because my idiot ally ran into a swarm of five or six heavily armed fuckos and getting erased as a result? FUCK OFF. IN SUMMATION - IF YOU'RE GOING TO HAVE ESSENTIAL NPC ALLIES, HAVE A DEFIBRILATOR WEAPON TO USE. FAILING A LEVEL DUE TO STUPID ALLIED AI IS A ONE WAY TICKET TO QUITTING BULLSHIT MAPS. ---- 4 - OH MY GOD WHY DID I DIE OUT OF NOWHERE FUCK THIS POORLY TESTED GLITCHY PIECE OF SHIT MAP I get it. Glitches are hard to avoid in maps sometimes. But you have to take some efforts to playtest and fix glitches in complex maps. This can range from unexpected events getting the player stuck or killed, to simple physics fuck-ups thanks to that overly complex machine you tried to make. And it can also involve someone activating an elevator that lacks walls, only to fall off due to either a simple mistake or an enemy shooting them off. And the elevator only works once, so guess that's another restart! Simply put, you have to playtest your maps!! I had one fucking map I played where, after doing a specific thing, an invisible wall spawned on top of an NPC ally and instakilled him, failing a goddamn level. Even better, thanks to the fact this was at the ass-end of a decently long level, if I wanted to take a second shot of the level, I'd have to play the whole thing ALL OVER AGAIN! Needless to say, I didn't. Oh, and even better, to avoid it, he would have had to climb over a decently sized rock. He was a Civil Security Heavy. Do the fucking math. IN SUMMATION - PLAYTEST YOUR MAPS. LOOK FOR BUGS OR SITUATIONS WHERE PLAYERS CAN GET STUCK THANKS TO LITTLE FAULT OF THEIR OWN. ALSO, MAKE ELEVATOR OR BUTTONS THAT ACTIVATE CERTAIN THINGS WORK MORE THAN ONCE. ---- And that's my list. I could have gone on, but I decided to stick to a broader gameplay-oriented thing for this list. I could have added stuff like "too much dialogue and not enough action" and such, but for this first list, I decided to keep it broad, to stuff people could relate to. What are things in maps you absolutely hate? Leave a comment about it or such. Or don't, I don't really care... Category:Blog posts